I don't really have a good setting yet. After some hair-rising flights, I decided that the Su-47 is damn tricky. I went out and bought an Eurofighter to practice more first, as I was afraid to destroy the Su-47 quickly. And now I am practicing with the Eurofighter which is ridiculously easy to fly in comparison. I routinely launch the EF by hand, I never had it tip stall (the Su-47 likes to do it), it doesn't jump like a bronco with its behind up and down and it just flies as if there would be nothing to it. I didn't touch the Su-47 in a while, I have to become a better pilot first.

Regarding expo etc: I have 65% Dual rate and -30% expo on the Su-47, but these are preliminary settings.

wow this thing is really impressive looking after assembly. Preparing to install my 72 mhz receiver and the radio programming that goes along with it. Any hints are welcome and thanks to those who have contributed to the thread....it's been very helpful.

Henrik,
Yes I can definitely see the EF being a lot more stable, with its huuuuge delta wing. As if forward swept wing wasn't unstable enough, I think you and I made it worse by increasing the wing loading so much. LOL at the bronco reference

flmlm (mike),
If you have any specific questions just ask.

SU-4ever,
nice video. I don't know how that model would fly without gyros, but it looks very well behaved in that video. In my case, I linked the gyros only to the TV nozzles, not to the surfaces (in hindsight, that was probably a dumb thing to do ). First, I have to get the CoG right and trim her out. Then if it survives, I will see what effect the gyros have. Hopefully, they will add stability. I'll post my results.

Time for me to way in on this discussion after watching and learning from you guys.

I bought one of these from a friend of mine in a partially complete state. He had partly assembled it but had some problems including melting a hole in the top of the fuse when one of the ESC's decided to cook itself. It also had some hanger rash and some cutouts in the base to try and extract the damaged ESC. No manual could be found either.

After finishing the build , replacing both ESC's and repairing the damage, I was ready for a maiden flight. I didn't even make it in the air. I didn't get a chance to try a full rolling test and so just applied power and shot down the runway (parking lot). The plane started veering right and no amount of left stick would bring it back on course. I powered off and watched in horror as it plowed in to a bollard and proceeded to remove the entire right hand side of the plane.
I picked up the pieces and threw them in the car. Once home I inspected the damage a bit closer and decided it may not be fixable. During the inspection I discovered that the front steering was not working as expected. There was a small amount of rotation but obviously not enough. When the retract was assembled in the factory, the person who glued the light on had used a little too much glue and it had locked the rotation. I have since managed to pull it all apart and fix the retract.

After hunting around on line I found out that there is a foam kit available and so I decide to buy a complete new set of foam and start again.
After taking into consideration the information found in this forum, I decided to separate all the servos. I also decided to move the ESC's forward to allow for proper thrust tubes to be installed behind the fans. I have installed metal gear servos for the elevators. The biggest pain in the a** was removing all the plastic components out of the old foam as they did not come with the foam kit parts. This meant cleaning the foam and glue from each and every plastic part in readiness for the new build.

I can't wait to finish this build and try for another maiden. I will let you know how things go. Should be ready in about a week or so if I can find the time.

Interesting idea moving the esc's forward. That will help you reduce the length of power wires needed. Keep them as short as possible, and use an extra hot soldering iron to solder the connectors. I would suggest using at least 10 gauge wire. Not doing any of this will cause overheated lipo and wires (ask me how I know). Make sure your CoG is SPOT ON (3.25 cm is the suggested magic number). Good luck.

my broken bird probably had more then 40 flights already, each time i fly it, i think it's gonna fold it's wings. But luck and CF rods favor me every time. I'm kinda liking the high alpha. If i had kept the TV nozzles on, after all this flying experience from this bird, i could probably hover it. But the new mig is making it difficult to make my mind up, for a new airframe.

Well, i did the hard way, Flew it till i got the hang of it. Fly-crash-fix, fly-crash-fix. I took as much as weight off as i could, no retracts, no chute, no TV nozzles, lipo = 3300mah. i flew and crashed it till i am convinced, the airframe needs replacing. Instead of flying it on high speed, try having a really high rate 120% of throws for slow high alpha flight, that way i get more movement in canards since i have the Pnp one, i did not want to open the mixing from factory. having the canards a little high incidence abour 3-5 deg's up. i am not good at the numbers, but if you look at the video i posted, you can get a pretty good idea about the high alpha that was without any TV nozzles, and i can still hover it for 2-3 seconds before it tip stalls.

Mtn-Commando, I am near poughkepsie, if you come upstate, we can do a formation flight.

I hope this helps. Try loosing all the extra weight you can from this bird, to me that was the best thing.

With all the somewhat not so good flight reviews on this bird, is it good just to make this into a pusher? -because I'm going to make mine (airframe) that way.
My setup that was suggested was a Scorpion SII 3014-1220 on 7x5 prop on 4s will give me around 3lbs of thrust at about 27amps or I could use a 8x6 for 4lbs of thrust with a little more amps respectively.